Preface
The story of Nicodemus captured my imagination and my heart while I was reading the Gospel of John two years ago. Jesus spoke John 3:16, the famous "For God so loved the world" verse, to just one man in a secretive night-time encounter. This same man, Nicodemus, appears again in John 7 when the Pharisees (religious leaders) sent guards to arrest Jesus in the Temple. John writes that Nicodemus tried to use his knowledge of the Jewish law to help Jesus:
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked [the Pharisees], "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?"
[The Pharisees] replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee." (John 7: 50-52 NIV).
The next and last recorded event in Nicodemus's life is that he and Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus's body.
These verses gave me tiny windows into the life of a respected Jewish leader who began as a skeptic of Jesus but became one of the few people who did not desert Jesus after his death on the cross. I wondered what Nicodemus's life was like before and between these events, and I was struck by the devastation he must have felt after the Crucifixion.
I have written his story to solve the puzzle I see in his three recorded interactions with Jesus. Nicodemus struggles to reconcile love with the Law and to sustain hope in the face of death and suffering.
The story of Nicodemus captured my imagination and my heart while I was reading the Gospel of John two years ago. Jesus spoke John 3:16, the famous "For God so loved the world" verse, to just one man in a secretive night-time encounter. This same man, Nicodemus, appears again in John 7 when the Pharisees (religious leaders) sent guards to arrest Jesus in the Temple. John writes that Nicodemus tried to use his knowledge of the Jewish law to help Jesus:
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked [the Pharisees], "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?"
[The Pharisees] replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee." (John 7: 50-52 NIV).
The next and last recorded event in Nicodemus's life is that he and Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus's body.
These verses gave me tiny windows into the life of a respected Jewish leader who began as a skeptic of Jesus but became one of the few people who did not desert Jesus after his death on the cross. I wondered what Nicodemus's life was like before and between these events, and I was struck by the devastation he must have felt after the Crucifixion.
I have written his story to solve the puzzle I see in his three recorded interactions with Jesus. Nicodemus struggles to reconcile love with the Law and to sustain hope in the face of death and suffering.
© 2011 Joy Buchanan -> Author